Posts by Elongated Muskrat

Bombshell biography: Fearing nuclear war, Musk blocked Starlink to stymie Ukraine attack on Russia

Re: The report is not completely accurate

I'm absolutely sure that something like a warship would have electronic countermeasures on board to disrupt things like thermal targeting (such as thermal chaff, for example, but probably a more high-tech equivalent), and GPS. Blowing up a bridge probably has different considerations again; it's one thing to steer an unmanned sea drone to the vicinity of the bridge, and another again to hit the spot you want to (presumably, the targeting points are quite specific as there are unlikely to be many weak points in Putin's armoured bridge), rather than simply continuing under it.

Ukraine are probably working with what they have. Yes, you can do all sorts of fancy things with arduinos or other microcontrollers, but if you want to launch an attack today, you'd be out of luck with the lead-time on the development and testing of the integration of those into any guidance system. I'm sure, as the war progresses, the sea-drone attacks will become more sophisticated (and the evidence is that the Ukrainian home-brew drones are already quite effective). They'll probably be developing and using several variants on designs, as this is a classic arms race between developing weapons and developing defences against those weapons. Ukraine will want to keep that as asymmetric as possible, as they are fighting the larger, less agile, enemy.

Re: The report is not completely accurate

We've all seen Threads, right?

The Anti Defamation League is Musk's latest excuse for Twitter's tanking ad revenue

Re: Lesseee here.

We are living in backwards world where now being a classical liberal (personal freedom, private property rights etc) and anti-war is seen as 'far right'

This is largely down to how the US has mangled the meaning of the word "liberal" to refer to liberal economics, rather than liberal social attitudes.

Liberal (or, since its decline, neo-liberal) economics is concerned with essentially having an unregulated market where those with the most capital stand to gain the most, at the expense of those with least capital. This is pretty much spot-on the definition of what right-wing means (the original meanings of the terms left and right, as I have pointed out in a post above), refer to whether those in power should represent the rich, or everyone.

"Personal freedom" is also a pretty nebulous term. Are you referring to freedoms such as freedom of movement, the freedom to graze animals on common land, freedom from oppression, that sort of thing, which are all pretty left-wing ideas, or to freedom from regulation, freedom to oppress, freedom to enclose land, freedom to use capital to gain more at the expense of others without regulation, and so on, which are right-wing concepts? As for private property rights, again, are you talking about rights to one's own home, or rights to buy up other people's homes, own multiple properties, rent them out, thus amplifying capital, and "intellectual property" rights where ideas are bought and sold by the rich, in order to make money, and extract "licensing" fees from the poor? Again, if you are arguing against regulation of this sort of "property", then this is right-wing.

As for being "anti-war"; again, define what you mean by this? Are you referring to an ideology where conflict should be avoided (arguably left-of-centre, although it's not really a left/right thing), or are you talking about allowing other nations to invade their neighbours and saying "I'm not getting involved?" Because appeasement didn't work very well in the 1930s, and that really did help the far right.

Re: Ad revenue tanking

'The Jews did it' is very much concocted by the political left.

[Citation required]

It might interest you to hear that (gasps of shock / horror / awe) many political parties on the left actually have Jews as members.

Of course, the conspiracy-minded amongst us might then claim this is so that the lizards can more easily keep an eye on them, or it's Stockholm Syndrome, or something.

People with brains might instead conclude that antisemitism operates regardless of where you fall on the (simplistic) left/right political spectrum, or are you one of "those" who is about to claim that a well known German politician in the early to mid 20th century was a member of a political party that was left-leaning because it had "socialist" in its name. If this is the case, I'll have to (again) point out that the official name of North Korea has "democratic" in it, and that names are not a reliable indicator of, well anything really.

It's almost as if a person's stance on whether rich people should control everything, or whether we should let everyone have a go (a very simplistic reduction of what left/right means in a political sense) has no bearing whatsoever on whether they are a racist.

As for my meds; the packet says I should only take one antihistamine a day. The pollen is quite bad this year, so I shan't be taking fewer than that, and I certainly won't be exceeding the stated dose. Maybe it's yourself that is assuming that everyone is prescribed antipsychotics?

Re: Musk's Master Plan

Given the (other? same?) AC posting above, can you be so sure?

Re: Ad revenue tanking

Yes, I mentioned the Rothschilds, as an example of the sort of conspiracy nonsense antisemitic nutters harp on about. You picked it up and ran with it, thus proving that you are part of that crowd, or too ignorant to not associate yourself with them. Not that you're actually associating yourself with anything, posting anonymously, but we can all tell it's the same AC.

My point, once again, is this: Pretty much all conspiracy theories, once examined and questioned, boil down to "the Jews did it". Yes, the Rothschilds are Jewish, yes they are rich, and yes, they have done some nasty things, but the point is that there are plenty of other rich people who have done nasty things, but somehow they don't get picked as the "example" of how the "NWO" is run by Jews, and other bullshit antisemitic tropes. The Rothschilds supporting Rhodes has nothing to do with a Jewish conspiracy, but you'd be forgiven for thinking that it did, if you follow all that conspiracy nonsense. If "thinking" is the right word.

Re: Ad revenue tanking

Well done, you're catching on - when you (and I'm pretty sure, from your comment, that you do) blame "the Rothschilds" for something bad that you don't like in one of your little "theories"*, you are just being plain-old antisemitic, because all of these conspiracy theories* are based on a core of interlinked bullshit, almost always having some form of antisemitism at their core. It's a well knwon phenomenon, and widely documented and discussed.

The actuall issue here, is the fact that you pick out "the Rothschilds" as the actual problem; a specific example of (Jewish) rich people; conspiracy theorists never seem to pick on ultra-rich people who happen not to be Jewish, do they? And here's the thing; the ultra-rich DO actually run things - that's called capitalism. If there's a problem with plutocracy (and many woudl argue that there is), the root of that problem is free-market capitalism, not Jews.

Here is a list of the ten richest people in the world, as an aside. As a quick exercise for the reader, how many are Rothschilds, how many are Jewish, how many are white men?

Elon Musk.

Bernard Arnault.

Jeff Bezos.

Larry Ellison.

Bill Gates.

Larry Page.

Warren Buffett.

Sergey Brin.

*Not actually theories at all; a theory is formed from a series of testable hypotheses, not a load of old horseshit that someone saw in a youtube video once, or read in a magazine. Those hypotheses must rely on reproducible and testable experimental results. A theory, in its true sense, is actually about as close as science can get to a proven fact.

Re: They can both go away.

You people are making shit up about me

...

making a tit of yourself in public

My friend, you are doing it to yourself.

I'm sure we've all managed to post things and then think, "maybe I should have thought about it a bit more first, before jumping in with both feet." However, it takes a special kind of talent to then go and find extra feet to jump in with, rather than then pausing for thought.

Re: Ad revenue tanking

Well, let's face it, if you're going to go full-on conspiracy theorist, then sooner or later you're sharing a platform with antisemitism. It's not like all those absolutely batshit crazy theories don't boil down to shibboleths like "the New World Order" (Jews), "the Rothschilds" (Jews), "The World Bank" (Jews), or just plain old straight-up bullshit like "the Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (you know that came from a novel published some decades before it was conjured up as a reason to hate Jews, right).

I'm not sure why Jewish people seem to bear the brunt of all the hate, and have done so over a good deal of European history, but there's a strong suggestion that organised Christianity, and the Catholic Church has something to do with it...

Personally, I think people should calm down a little bit, and live by the adage of "don't be a dick", especially when it comes to being a dick to already marginalised or victimised groups...

That goes double for Elon: Don't be a dick, Elon, don't be a dick...

Re: They can both go away.

Thanks for "mansplaining" Godwin's Law to a group of people who already know very well what it refers to, and why genuine comparisons to fascism are a fair exception, according to Godwin himself.

But hey, you do you, don't let us stop you making a tit of yourself in public.

Google Chrome pushes ahead with targeted ads based on your browser history

The truth of the matter is, that advertising targeted at the user is really no more effective than advertising targeted at the topic of the site it appears on, and potentially less so.

If I'm looking to by a refrigerator, and I go to an appliances site and see adverts for refrigerators, they are likely to be relevant, and at least make me aware of brands that exist in the field. I'll still go and read a bunch of reviews and then pick a make and model I intend to buy, and search for the cheapest supplier, rather than click on an ad and pay for a refrigerator that has been made slightly more expensive by the fact that the price has advertising costs baked in.

If the ad trackers determine I've been looking at appliance sites and start targeting ads at me for refrigerators, my response is likely to be "why would I want to buy another refrigerator".

In any case, my immediate response to 99.99% of adverts will be "fuck off," and they will make me less likely to buy that product, especially if it is a product in a field where I am already aware of other offerings. Others may be more susceptible to advertising mindfuckery, but awareness of how advertising psy-ops work is the first step in not being influenced.

Re: VPN use could add confusion to Google's plans

I'm assuming you're accessing RT for research purposes, rather than as a news source? Some of that Russian propaganda can be pretty insidious, and you can be made to look quite the fool for swallowing it, when it turns out to be demonstrably false (such as footage of "air strikes" taken from video games).

No fan of Google, but I'd disagree. Chrome Firefox exists for the sole purpose of being better than Internet Explorer.

FTFY, no charge, and not even any advertising cookies on your machine for the trouble.

Re: Some questions

The government in the UK hasn't (yet) managed to butcher the UK's implementation of GDPR so that the laws surrounding privacy are weakened. They do, however, seem to be fully intent on doing so. Big companies will probably not take advantage of this, because the incoming Labour government could very well end up strengthening privacy laws when they replace the Tories next year. Then again, seeing how Starmer appears to be trying to appease everyone with money, they could be weakened further.

In any case, when we rejoin the EU, be that in 5, 10 or 20 years time, GDPR will have to apply again.

Once a solution is in place, organisations aren't going to change it unless they have to, or have some clear benefit from doing so. If anything, other incoming government policies are likely to make doing business in the UK less attractive anyway (such as the idea of breaking encrypted communications because THINK OF THE CHILDREN, that everyone is saying is about as clever and workable as the idea of having Liz Truss as Prime Minister).

Re: no change there then..

Chrome is not Chromium in the way that a Ford Fiesta is not a Zetec engine. Other, less popular cars (for instance the Ford Focus) can be built around the Zetec engine, in the same way that other, less popular browsers (read: Edge) can be built around the chromium engine.

All* the privacy violating stuff is in Chrome, not in Chromium, in the same way that a Ford Focus does not have a Ford Fiesta chassis.

Meanwhile, there are people who don't like Fords and drive a Renault, or an Audi, or a Volvo, in the same way that people who don't trust or like Google use another non-chromium-based browser, such as Firefox.

*Well, probably all. Certainly a lot of the most egregious stuff.

Re: Enhanced Ad Privacy ..

You know you can set the block list on a Pi Hole to anything you like, right? You can use one of many, many preconfigured lists, or even hand-craft your own blacklist / whitelist.

If you're relying on a third-party list, and they don't blacklist something you want blocked, you can just block that domain yourself.

Re: Enhanced Ad Privacy ..

+ Pi Hole + Firefox

People use Chrome because they are lazy, in the same way that people used to use Internet Explorer.

Other, privacy conscious, browsers are available, but you'd be a fool to implicitly trust any software you hadn't written yourself, and then there's questions about whether you should even trust your compiler anyway, thanks to Ken Thompson...

Maybe it's time to get the soldering iron out and start making your own transistors. Can we trust that this semiconductor wafer is really n-doped?

Microsoft calls time on ancient TLS in Windows, breaking own stuff in the process

Re: This will be fun

Rich Content? Was he one of the Bay City Rollers?

Why don't you test it with a newer SQL Server version, then? IIRC, they're generally backwards-compatible, unless your application is using something arcane (like some sort of Silverlight integration) that has been killed with prejudice by MS in the meanwhile. If it's plain old SQL queries, then you'll be fine, and if you want to know what your application is sending over the wire, use SQL Profiler, or an equivalent profiling method; that has all been easily available at least as far back as SQL Server 2012.

Re: OK - you curse the beancounters

In the phrase "IT industry", it’s not the "IT" part that's the problem, it's the "industry" part, comprised of manglement and beancounters who don't understand the IT part, but still hold the purse-strings.

BOFH: What a beautiful tinfoil hat, Boss!

Re: ECO DECT

No pork or chicken then?

Re: Blockers

People around here don't need them, they just merrily walk into the road, assuming that if they don't look for oncoming traffic, it can't hit them.

Musk's latest X-periments: No more headlines, old posts vanish, block gets banned

Re: Engagement??

ISTR it was "Covfefe". We had a goldfish with that name for several years before he passed away. Was it really that long ago?

Re: It is amazing

Being in hock to the Saudis might not be the best of ideas, either. I've heard they still chop people's hands off for the crime of theft.

I prefer "(e)X social media," I'm surprised it hasn't gone out of business yet, but I suppose ol' Musky-boy still has plenty of funds to flush away promoting hatred rather than doing anything useful with it

Re: All this money and bother, for what?

I think there has actually been some good research to show that the best way to lift people out of poverty is to actually give the money directly to them, individually, as they are naturally in the best position to know how to spend it to help themselves.

The logic is that if someone is living hand-to-mouth in an undeveloped country, and you give them $100, they use that to take care of their immediate needs, then do things that are useful to themselves, such as buying livestock or crop seeds.

The alternative model, in the US, of "non-profit organisations", and in the UK of "charitable organisations", involves pretty much full-time fundraising and payments to multiple levels of management, and very little of the money ever reaches the people who need it, not least because if NPOs and charities actually solved the problems they set out to solve, they'd have to cease to exist, and all those people would be out of work. That $100 is much more likely to get spent on office rent, or a new pair of trainers for a chugger.

Last rites for the UK's Online Safety Bill, an idea too stupid to notice it's dead

Re: This is government.

Ouch, no. Stop. It hurts.

Re: "Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear."

I'm guessing those two downvotes are from... what?

Holocaust deniers?

Or, perhaps people who think breaking international treaties is fine as long as it's us doing it, and not someone else?

Both groups are a danger to society...

Re: Not holding my breath

Well, there is that too. None of this "15 minute cities are prisons" bullshit, though.

FWIW, you don't seem to be able to cross the road in the middle of Oxford without nearly getting hit by a bus, so I think the public transport there, at least in the bits where they don't want you driving cars, is certainly better than it is here in Bristol.

Re: This is government.

I don't really care if I get down-votes for my comments; a lot of them are bound to rile some people up; I was just worried that my snarky comment might have been too subtle, or ambiguous, for some.

Re: Not holding my breath

Nope, an anecdote is not a statistic, just as the plural of anecdote isn't evidence. However, maybe have a look for yourself; it's pretty easy to work out how old most vehicles are from the registration in most cases. For the ones where you can't, they're already paying a wanker tax for the personalised plate anyway. Actual statistics on the number of registered vehicles of each age on teh roads are probably available, and certainly known to the DVLA.

Re: Not holding my breath

The fact that you immediately swooped in on the "needing milk" aspect of what I wrote demonstrates that your reasoning is entirely specious. If you can't distinguish a random illustrative example from a core argument, you might as well return your pre-frontal cortex on the grounds of it not working as designed right now.

Re: Not holding my breath

I'll just add, that I occasionally visit Oxford, and do so, by car. The last time I did was after they'd put in these supposedly terrible "anti-car" measures. I drove to, and parked at, the exact same spot I always do (Oxpens car park), with no difference (except you now seem to be able to pay more easily with a card at the payment machine). From there, it is a short walk to the centre of the city, so only the extremely lazy would have any complaint. I suspect if you have genuine reasons to need to drive a car right into the centre of Oxford, such as a disability, you'd still be able to do so.

Re: The Reg goes all EFF, yet again

We'd be naïve to think such things don't still happen. Opening letters of a known enemy of the state, in order to know what they are saying, and to whom, is a long tradition, going a LOT further back than the 20th century. The key, of course, is oversight. Spooks doing it today should need at least a suspicion, and a court order, to do so.

There is, of course, a category difference between espionage/counter-espionage, and mass surveillance.

Re: The Reg goes all EFF, yet again

There are problems with criminal behaviour on the internet which are obvious to ordinary people.

There, FTFY; the internet is merely the medium, the criminal behaviour exists outside of it. Your argument is akin to saying that ransom notes can be sent through the post, so the police must open all letters. You should read up on the history of the STASI if you think this is a good argument.

Re: This is government.

(for the single down-voter here, I was implying that those profiting from crime and those profiting from government contracts are not always easily distinguishable in their ethics or actions)

Re: "Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear."

Correct; this illustrates how the "left/right" spectrum is misleading, as it represents only a single dimension of political belief. The dimension we are interested in here is the Libertarian/Authoritarian axis, and again, with any axis of political leaning, being at either extreme end represents the adoption of belief over evidence.

All Home Secs in at least my own lifetime have sat quite a long way off towards authoritarianism, and anecdotally, there is a strong suggestion that this is due to the environment in the Home Office shaping the Home Secretary, rather than the other way around.

Of course, at the other end of that axis, you have preppers, who are also something you shouldn't be aspiring to be.

Re: "Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear."

There's a corollary to Godwin's Law that covers misuse of Godwin's Law to shut down discussion, although I don't think it has a formal name.

Re: Not holding my breath

[citation required]

All of this is what some people are saying 15-minute cities are about. That doesn't mean that's actually what the term means. The whole situation in Oxford has nothing to do with "15-minute cities" and is entirely down to that City have a shitty council that hates car drivers.

Re: faulty by design

If the government wanted to protect children from sexual abuse, they would invest those billions into social services. The vast majority of such offences are committed by someone within, or known to, the family, and within the family home. The fact that social services are one of the things that has been repeatedly cut under government "austerity" demonstrates exactly how much they genuinely care about children, which is exactly not at all.

Re: The Reg goes all EFF, yet again

says someone who clearly has no knowledge of the criminal justice system, or law enforcement in general

Re: Last Rites, unfortunately...

A religious service contains a religious reference? Whodathunkit?

"Last Rites" themselves being a religious observance, and all. There's nothing stopping you from having a non-religious funeral ceremony, in the UK at least. This may not be the case in other countries (I think Ireland is still overly-entwined with the Holy See, although matters there may well have changed in recent years, they show signs of being rapidly more progressive than the UK)

Re: This is government.

I'm not 100% convinced the tax recipients would change, you know.

Re: "Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear."

Godwin's Law only applies when the comparison or reference to the N word is not a valid one. Calling someone goose-stepping along whilst waving a swastika flag and demanding death to minority groups a Nazi, for example, would be entirely appropriate, as is pointing out that the rhetoric someone is using is the same as that used by the Nazis.

Re: "Nothing to Hide, Nothing to Fear."

Well, yes and no. Since they were in power, they could (and did) legalise mechanised mass murder and genocide. Arguably, they broke a number of international conventions (such as the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War), but it's worth pointing out that our own government thinks it's fine to pass legislation that breaks international treaties.

A lot of the things the Nazis did were deemed a "crime against humanity," which wasn't even a term that existed until the Nuremberg trials, after WW2.

What this exposes are a couple of things:

1) Prior to the European Convention on Human Rights (again, a post-war thing), human rights pretty much didn't exist. If a nation made murdering you legal, and then murdered you, tough luck.

2) Making a thing legal is very much not the same thing as making it right.

3) Any government that claims that human rights are an inconvenience and talks about leaving the ECHR is doing so knowing full well that the human rights we have today are as a result of past atrocities, and would place themselves on the side of the fence with those people that committed those atrocities. Such people themselves are a danger to humanity.

Re: Not holding my breath

I agreed with you up until you blew the dog whistle with "severe restrictions on car travel" - even in places that have "clean air zones" and in London the "ULEZ", the vast majority of cars are unregulated. HGVs, diesel cars made before 2014 (EURO NCAP 6) and petrol cars made before 2006 (EURO NCAP 4) are the vehicles that are chargeable. Most of the cars I see on the road are more recent than that.

From the perspective of having cities where everything you need is within a 15 minute's walk, so you don't have to get into your car to get a pint of milk or loaf of bread (at non-exorbitant prices), I fail to see what problem people have with this. Nobody is stopping anyone from travelling to somewhere that is 16 minutes away, and if you listen to those who think this is what "15-minute cities" are about, they'll also probably be likely to tell you that birds aren't real, COVID is a hoax, and something something freeman-on-the-land. I'd advise against paying attention to such people, as the quality of "information" they are imparting is questionable.

Lesson 1: Keep your mind on the ... why aren't the servers making any noise?

This doesn't sound real

A server room with windows? Pull the other one...

Moscow makes a mess on the Moon as Luna 25 probe misses orbit, lands with a thud

Re: "Luna 25, by contrast, tried to make the trip in nine days"

Russia hasn't even claimed to be communist since the fall of the Soviet Union (which had blessed few actual soviets in it, and none that weren't basically puppets controlled from Moscow)

Re: "Luna 25, by contrast, tried to make the trip in nine days"

Now is probably the time to mention an expert piece of trolling in the local Oxfam book shop some years back, where they had placed a copy of Mein Kampf on the shelf next to a biography of Thatcher.

Resilience is overrated when it's not advertised

Re: Fallback fault-tolerant

Should have gone with one of these, rather than one of his characters.

If nothing else, it should be amusing watching non Greek-speakers trying to pronounce Creophylus correctly.